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If past hospitalizations for pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses are any guide, many Americans could face high out-of-pocket medical costs for COVID-19 hospitalizations despite the fact that many insurers have waived their cost-sharing requirements, a study from researchers at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests.

For their study, the researchers analyzed out-of-pocket costs for pneumonia and other upper respiratory illness hospitalizations from January 2016 through August 2019 as a potential indicator of likely COVID-19 costs. The researchers found that these out-of-pocket costs were particularly high for so-called consumer-directed health plans--which typically feature lower premiums, compared to standard plans, but higher deductibles that can be paid via tax-advantaged health savings accounts.

The findings were published online June 15 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Many big-name health insurers have voluntarily waived out-of-pocket cost sharing for COVID-19 treatment. However, employer-sponsored "self-insured" health insurance plans are not required to adhere to such waivers. Thus, tens of millions of Americans have high-deductible insurance plans that, in cases of COVID-19 hospitalization, may expose them to relatively high out-of-pocket costs.

"Congress is now debating whether or not to require all plans to waive cost sharing related to COVID-19 treatment. Our findings suggest that they might want to take action to broaden cost-sharing waivers to include these self-insured plans, because those out-of-pocket costs are otherwise going to be high for many people," says study lead author Matthew Eisenberg, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School.

COVID-19, the disease that is caused by the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, often features pneumonia in moderate and severe cases. It has struck more than 7 million people worldwide and killed more than 400,000 since its initial outbreak in China late last year. The U.S. has had the largest number of cases and deaths by far, with more than 250,000 hospitalizations for moderate to severe COVID-19, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

To help reduce the cost burden of COVID-19 testing, Congress has banned insurance co-pays, out-of-pocket payments, and other cost sharing for COVID-19 testing, effectively requiring most insurers to cover the full cost. Many private insurance companies also have voluntarily extended such cost-sharing waivers for COVID-19 treatment. But about 60 percent of employer-sponsored health insurance plans are self-insurance plans. In such plans, the employer assumes the financial risk of medical care for their employees rather than the insurer. Such companies are not obliged to waive cost-sharing for COVID-19 treatment, and thus many of the millions of Americans insured under these plans could face high out-of-pocket costs, especially if their plans are high-deductible, consumer-directed plans.

To get a sense of the likely cost burden on patients hospitalized for COVID-19, Eisenberg and colleagues examined de-identified insurance claims for 34,395 unique hospitalizations from January 2016 through August 2019. They looked at out-of-pocket costs incurred by people who had been hospitalized during the 2016-2019 study period with pneumonia, acute bronchitis, lower respiratory infections, and acute respiratory distress syndrome. (Claims data on actual COVID-19 cases were not available in the database at the time of the study.) The cases examined did not include those for people ages 65 and over, who are normally covered by Medicare. The out-of-pocket costs included deductible payments, copayments, and coinsurance payments.

The researchers found that average out-of-pocket spending for the 2016-2019 study period for these respiratory hospitalizations was $1,961 for patients with consumer-directed plans versus $1,653 for patients in traditional, usually smaller-deductible plans.

The out-of-pocket cost gap was lowest for older patients age 56 to 64, and greatest--$2,237 vs. $1,685--for patients 21 and younger. The analysis was not designed to examine why the cost gap varied inversely with patient age, but one possible explanation proposed by the researchers was that, since younger patients are healthier on average, their hospitalizations may reflect more serious and thus more costly illness.

"For people already struggling with serious respiratory illness due to COVID-19, the added stress of managing large medical bills could be devastating at this moment when so many Americans are experiencing major financial strain and job loss," says study co-author Alene Kennedy-Hendricks, PhD, assistant scientist in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Bloomberg School. "This is a critical area to watch and to consider for policy action moving forward."

Given that self-insured plans cannot be regulated at the state level, the researchers suggest that federal policymakers should consider waiving COVID-19 cost sharing for self-insured plan policyholders. They note too that while the likely out-of-pocket costs would be greatest for people enrolled in high-deductible, consumer-directed plans, the findings indicate that people in traditional plans also could face fairly large out-of-pocket costs.

Picture 500 million cars stacked in rows. That's how much carbon--about 1,000 petagrams, or one billion metric tons--is locked away in Arctic permafrost.

Currently, scientists estimate that 5-15% of the carbon stored in surface permafrost soils could be emitted as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by 2100, given the current trajectory of global warming. This emission, spurred by microbial action, could lead to 0.3 to 0.4 degrees Celsius of additional global warming.

But this estimation is missing a crucial path that carbon dioxide may be entering the atmosphere: sunlight.

According to a University of Michigan study, organic carbon in thawing permafrost soils flushed into lakes and rivers can be converted to carbon dioxide by sunlight, a process known as photomineralization.

The research, led by aquatic geochemist Rose Cory, has found that organic carbon from thawing permafrost is highly susceptible to photomineralization by ultraviolet and visible light, and could contribute an additional 14% of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Her team's study is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

"Only recently have global climate models included greenhouse gases from thawing permafrost soils. But none of them contain this feedback pathway," said Cory, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences.

"To get a number on how much carbon could be released from permafrost soils through oxidation, we have to understand what are the processes and what is the timescale: maybe this carbon is just so resistant to oxidation that, even if thawed out, it would just flow into the Arctic ocean and be buried in another freezer."

This pathway has been debated because measuring how sunlight degrades soil carbon is difficult. Each wavelength of light has a different effect on soil organic carbon, as does the level of iron in the soil. To precisely measure how carbon dioxide is emitted when organic carbon is exposed to sunlight, Cory's co-corresponding author Collin Ward, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and U-M alum, developed a method to measure each wavelength's effect on soil organic carbon. To do this, he built a new instrument that uses LED lights to mimic different wavelengths of the sun.

"This new LED-based method makes it far easier and cheaper to figure out how light-driven reactions vary for different wavelengths of the sun," Ward said. "After I built the instrument I immediately called Rose and told her that I wanted to first use it on permafrost samples."

The researchers placed organic carbon leached from soil samples from six Arctic locations in the instrument, and then subjected the samples to the LED light. After the light exposure, they extracted the carbon dioxide cryogenically and used a mass spectrometer to measure the age and amount of carbon dioxide given off by the soil carbon.

They found that not only did the wavelength of sunlight impact the amount of carbon dioxide released, the amount of iron in the sample did as well. Iron acted as a catalyst, increasing the reactivity of the soil.

"What we have long suspected is that iron catalyzes this sunlight-driven process, and that's exactly what our results show," Cory said. "As the total amount of iron increases, the amount of carbon dioxide increases."

Cory's team also used carbon dating to age the soil organic carbon and the carbon dioxide emitted from it to demonstrate this oxidation was happening to ancient permafrost, not just soil that thaws annually. This is important because soil that thaws annually would release a much smaller amount of carbon dioxide than what's available in permafrost.

The researchers found that it was between 4,000 and 6,300 years old, and by demonstrating how old the soil is, they show that permafrost carbon is susceptible, or labile, to oxidation to carbon dioxide.

"Not only do we have the first wavelength specific measurement of this sunlight-driven reaction but we have verification that it's old carbon that is oxidized to carbon dioxide," Cory said. "We can put to rest any doubt that sunlight will oxidize old carbon and we show what is controlling this process--it's the iron that catalyzes the sunlight oxidation of ancient (or old) carbon."

Including the U-M team's finding into climate change models means that--conservatively--there could be a release of 6% of the 100 billion metric tons of carbon currently stored in Arctic permafrost. If 6% doesn't sound like much, consider that's the carbon equivalent of approximately 29 million cars evaporating into the atmosphere.

While crop diseases have devastating consequences on agriculture, causing losses of up to 30% in some crops, plants constantly evolve to maintain robust immune systems that allow them to perceive pathogens and develop defenses. One key player in this system is the plant cell wall, a complex structure that surrounds all plant cells. The plant cell wall is a dynamic structure modified by interactions with microbes and environmental stresses. These modifications alter the integrity of the cell wall and often activate plant immunity and disease resistance responses.

Scientists are always looking for ways to improve crop disease resistance by advancing their knowledge of the plant immunity system. In a study published recently, a group of biologists discovered that cell wall extracts from immune active plants could be used by agriculture companies to develop sustainable treatments that help crops protect against pathogens and pests.

Antonio Molina and his research group at Centro de Biotecnología y Genómica de Plantas in Spain aimed to understand the role of the cell wall in the regulation of plant resistance responses to pathogens. To do that, a collection of mutants with alterations on their cell walls composition/structure were selected and their resistance to different pathogens analyzed.

"Our results support the potential use of formulations based on cell wall-derived molecules that trigger immune responses," explained Antonio Molina. "The use of such formulations could present a simple, sustainable, and effective treatment to protect crops against losses."

The research focused on the Arabidopsis Response Regulators 6 (ARR6) gene, which has been shown to be involved in the responses mediated by the plant hormones known as cytokinins. Molina and his colleagues showed that ARR6 is actually a regulator of cell wall composition and of the disease resistance responses of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana against different pathogens causing important crops diseases. This discovery reinforces the role the plant cell wall in the modulation of specific immune responses.

"We have identified a pectin-enriched cell wall fractions of arr6 mutant that has an enhanced activity in triggering defense response in Arabidopsis plants," said Molina. "This finding indicate that the cell walls of arr6 mutant have a differential composition than that of wild-type plants, and that arr6 walls might contain molecules which could contribute to the differential resistance response to fungi and bacteria observed in these plants. This points to an interesting, novel interaction between wall composition, innate immunity signaling and disease resistance."

Molina's research group was most surprised to find that the differential resistance responses activated in arr6 plants were not the "classical" disease resistant responses characterized so far, indicating that novel defensive mechanisms associated with alteration on cell wall composition will be discovered, like the immune responses described in their article.

One in four households with children have reported a child experiencing hunger as a result of the COVID-19 health crisis, according to the latest CUNY SPH COVID-19 tracking survey. Many New Yorkers continued to report difficulties in getting the food they needed, but of particular concern is the impact on households with children under the age of 18. About one in three of these households reported that since the epidemic started a child had lost weight and almost one in four reported that a child had been hungry because they couldn't get enough food to feed them. These are the major findings of the 12th city and statewide tracking survey from the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy (CUNY SPH), conducted on May 29th and 30th.

Among the sample of 1,000 New York City residents surveyed, 44% reported they worried their household's food would run out before they could afford to buy more and 30% said they were actually unable to pay for the food they needed. These are the same levels of food insecurity reported at the beginning of May, suggesting that despite the significant expansion of public and private food assistance programs seen in the last month, many New Yorkers still struggle to get the food they need.

For pediatricians, food insecurity that results in weight loss is a warning sign for more serious nutritional problems in children. Reports that one in four children are experiencing hunger suggest that New York City must strengthen efforts to reduce child hunger, especially as the federal income supports created in the first months of the epidemic run out.

"Child food insecurity and hunger are among the most debilitating consequences of insufficient income" said Nicholas Freudenberg, Distinguished Professor of Public Health and Director of the CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute. "Their long-term health and social consequences emphasize the importance of acting now to reduce this burden on the future health of New Yorkers."

Other survey findings highlighted additional threats to food security and healthy diets. When asked to compare to before the epidemic:

70% of respondents reported they are now spending more on food weekly

64% reported they are shopping less frequently

54% reported their diet is less healthy now than before the epidemic

49% reported they were eating more packaged food (generally lower in nutrients than fresh foods).

Lower income households reported spending more on food and eating more packaged food as compared to higher income households. This was also true for Black and Latinx households as compared to white households. These findings suggest that the dietary changes associated with the COVID-19 epidemic may be widening pre-existing dietary inequities in New York City.
The complete survey results and related commentary can be found at https://sph.cuny.edu/research/covid-19-tracking-survey/week-12 and JHC Impact, an initiative of the Journal of Health Communication: International Perspectives.

Survey methodology:

The CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy (CUNY SPH) survey was conducted by Emerson College Polling from May 29-31 (week 12). This tracking effort started March 13-15 (week 1), and continued with questions fielded March 20-22 (week 2) and March 27-29 (week 3), April 3-5, 2020 (week 4), April 10-12, 2020 (week 5), April 17-29 (week 6), April 24-26, 2020 (week 7), May 1-3, 2020 (week 8), and May 15-17, 2020 (week 10).

The sample for the NY Statewide and New York City results were both, n=1,000, with a Credibility Interval (CI) similar to a poll's margin of error (MOE) of +/- 3 percentage points. The data sets were weighted by gender, age, ethnicity, education and region based on the 2018 1-year American Community Survey model. It is important to remember that subsets based on gender, age, ethnicity and region carry with them higher margins of error, as the sample size is reduced. In the New York City results, data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines (n=475), SMS-to-online (n=327) and an online panel provided by MTurk and Survey Monkey (n=197). In the Statewide results, data was collected using an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines (n=469), SMS-to-online (n=319) and an online panel provided by MTurk and Survey Monkey (n=212).

Imagine Earth completely covered in ice. While it's hard to picture all of today's oceans and land masses obscured with glaciers, such an ice-covered version of the planet was not so far-fetched millions of years ago.

Lasting from approximately 1,000 to 540 million years ago, the dramatic chapter is an important part of Earth's 4.5-billion-year history. Known as the Neoproterozoic Era, the period of severe glaciation was a time when multicellular organisms were beginning to diversify and spread across the planet.

Many researchers posit that ice may have covered every surface of the planet, stretching from the poles all the way to the hot tropics of the equator--a hypothesis known as "Snowball Earth."

How was it possible there was global ice--even in the warmest areas of Earth?

Researchers from the University of Rochester are shedding new light on that question. By analyzing mineral data left by glaciers before the onset of the Neoproterozoic Era, Scott MacLennan, a postdoctoral research associate in the lab of Mauricio Ibanez-Mejia, an assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, present the first geological evidence that Earth may have had a cool climate before Snowball Earth.

The study, published in Science Advances, provides important information about a period of the planet's history that paved the way for the development of complex life on Earth.

"This is a fascinating period, as these dramatic environmental changes happened right as the first true animals were beginning to appear and evolve on Earth," Ibanez-Mejia says.

WHAT CAUSED SNOWBALL EARTH?

A critical aspect of understanding a period of planetwide glaciation is determining what the climate was like before Snowball Earth. Computer models indicate that a cool global climate was necessary in order to initiate a Snowball Earth state, but such a state has not been confirmed by geological evidence. Instead, geological evidence has previously suggested that Earth had a warm and ice-free climate immediately prior to the Neoproterozoic glaciation.

While scientists don't know the exact mechanisms that may have caused Snowball Earth, they suspect that whatever they were, the mechanisms involved a massive decrease in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. There are several scenarios in which the atmospheric carbon dioxide may have decreased. They include an increase in biomass in the oceans, which may have taken carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and turned it into organic matter, or an increase in the weathering of the continental crust, which also takes up carbon dioxide.

In order to determine whether these scenarios are feasible, however, it's critical to know more about Earth's climate before the massive glaciation events started.

"If the Earth was very hot, it would mean the ocean was storing a lot of heat, which would take a lot of time to get rid of in order to create a Snowball Earth," MacLennan says.

UNLOCKING CLIMATE CLUES IN ROCKS

Scientists can determine Earth's climate at points in time by studying rocks that were deposited at different times throughout Earth's history. MacLennan and his colleagues used zircon dating methods to very precisely date glacial rocks found in modern-day Virginia. Paleomagnetic data, which allows researchers to determine where the continents were located thousands and even millions of years ago, have established that Virginia was located in the middle of a supercontinent within the tropics while the glacial rocks were being deposited. The supercontinent later broke up into smaller parts.

The researchers discovered that the glacial rocks were actually deposited 30 million years before the first Snowball Earth. The observation was surprising because they had expected the glacial rocks to be related to the Snowball Earth event. Instead, the discovery indicates that there were glaciers in the tropics near the equator--albeit at potentially high altitudes--even before Snowball Earth.

"The planet always gets colder away from the tropics and toward the poles because Earth receives most of its incoming sunlight at the equator," MacLennan says. "If there are glaciers in the tropics, the rest of the planet must have also been very cold. This means that our previous vision of a hot, humid world before the Snowball Earth is probably incorrect."

The potential trigger mechanism for the massive global cooling therefore may not have been as extreme as some researchers believe; the planet didn't immediately turn from a warm state to a frozen state but instead appears to have experienced a more gradual cool-off into a Snowball Earth state.

THE SURVIVAL OF LIFE IN THE NEOPROTEROZOIC ERA

This research raises interesting questions about what Earth was really like 800 to 700 million years ago, before Snowball Earth events, during a time when interesting biological innovations were taking place as multicellular organisms were beginning to diversify.

"There have been a lot of questions about how multi- and single-cellular life forms would survive the Snowball Earths, especially if there was a rapid transition from a hot greenhouse world," MacLennan says. "Our estimates for pre-Snowball climate imply the planet was probably colder than the modern world, which means there may have been ample cold environments at high latitude and altitude where organisms could have adapted to these cold conditions."

June 15, 2020 -- The complex food shopping patterns that financially insecure families employ have been upended by the COVID-19 crisis. While increasing the maximum benefit for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly Food Stamps) is an essential step in addressing the current food insecurity crisis, this policy change alone will not address many of the barriers low-income families are facing in acquiring food during the pandemic.

To facilitate advocacy and policy change around this food insecurity crisis among children and families, researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health developed a web mapping tool that details states where SNAP shoppers can purchase groceries online and key SNAP policies related to food shopping during the pandemic. The mapping tool also highlights variation in SNAP distribution dates by state. The paper is published in the Journal of Urban Health.

As of mid-March 2020, SNAP recipients were prohibited from using their benefits to purchase foods online, with the exception of a pilot program in five states. While the pilot has expanded rapidly during the pandemic, "rollout of the online purchasing technology may take several months in many states and eligible stores remain limited," said Eliza W. Kinsey, PhD, associate research scientist in the Department of Epidemiology at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. "This means many SNAP recipients still cannot order groceries to be delivered to their home and must shop in-person, thus putting themselves and their families at significantly greater risk and furthering the class and racial inequities already manifesting in the current crisis."

Many low-income households visit multiple food stores in search of the most affordable products, often traveling long distances to acquire food, according to Kinsey and co-author Andrew Rundle, DrPh, associate professor of epidemiology at Columbia Mailman School. For many urban households that rely on public transit or rideshare services, these strategic food shopping techniques are now much riskier.

"Despite innovative strategies to alleviate the impact of this crisis on the food security of children and families, COVID19 will exacerbate health disparities and have profound effects on the food and financial security of many in this country for years to come," noted Kinsey.

Sophia Antipolis - 15 June 2020: Use the right tool for the job. Today experts outline the best way to identify people most likely to develop common and devastating heart rhythm disorders. The advice is published in EP Europace,1 a journal of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) and presented on EHRA Essentials 4 You, a scientific platform of the ESC.

The paper recommends how best to determine the likelihood of developing a heart rhythm disorder and also how to assess the risk for poor outcome in patients with that condition. The document focuses on atrial fibrillation, the most common heart rhythm disorder and a major cause of disabling stroke, and ventricular tachyarrhythmia (fast heart rate), a leading cause of sudden cardiac death.

The topic is of urgent public health importance: one in four middle-aged adults in Europe and the US will develop atrial fibrillation. It is estimated that by 2030 there will be around 14 to 17 million patients with atrial fibrillation in the EU, with 120,000 to 215,000 new diagnoses each year.2

"Accurate risk assessment enables earlier diagnosis and intervention--with lifestyle changes or medication--that could be preventative," said lead author Professor Jens Cosedis Nielsen of Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark. "To get the correct answer in assessing risk, we must use the tools that have been proven to accurately predict the condition or outcome."

To take an example, the probability of developing atrial fibrillation rises with increasing age, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and prior heart attack. Behaviour modification, such as reducing alcohol intake and losing weight, could prevent atrial fibrillation or delay onset.

In patients with atrial fibrillation, the possibility of stroke increases with advanced age, heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes, prior stroke or heart attack, and in women. Research shows that anticoagulant drugs dramatically reduce stroke risk in patients with a combination of these factors.

"Stroke is one of the worst things that can happen, and around one-quarter of them occur in patients with atrial fibrillation," said Professor Nielsen. "Strokes due to atrial fibrillation are more disabling than strokes with other causes. With a good risk assessment, we can avoid needless strokes."

When it comes to ventricular tachyarrhythmia, the most common predisposing factor is a previous heart attack. When combined with a poor pump function of the heart (called ejection fraction), patients are at increased risk of cardiac arrest and death. Sudden death can be prevented by implanting a defibrillator (called an ICD or implantable cardioverter defibrillator).

The document devotes a section to wearable technologies, such as smartwatches, a market expected to grow to 929 million connected devices by next year. There is evidence that devices can help detect atrial fibrillation, but the accuracy varies.

"There still is a problem with a lot of false positives, where the device claims a person has atrial fibrillation, but they do not," said Professor Nielsen. "Furthermore, if a smartwatch picks up 30 minutes of incidental atrial fibrillation in a person with no symptoms, we have no data on whether anticoagulation prevents stroke in this situation."

He concluded: "Wearables may be very valuable in the future but at the moment they do not have a defined place in risk assessment."

The international consensus statement on risk assessment in cardiac arrhythmias was developed by the European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA), a branch of the ESC; the Heart Rhythm Society (HRS); the Asia Pacific Heart Rhythm Society (APHRS); and the Latin American Heart Rhythm Society (LAHRS). It is also published in Heart Rhythm, the official journal of the HRS, Journal of Arrhythmia, the official journal of the APHRS, and Journal of Interventional Cardiac Electrophysiology, the official journal of the LAHRS.

One of the biggest and longest-standing questions in the history of human thought is whether there are other intelligent life forms within our Universe. Obtaining good estimates of the number of possible extraterrestrial civilizations has however been very challenging.

A new study led by the University of Nottingham and published today in The Astrophysical Journal has taken a new approach to this problem. Using the assumption that intelligent life forms on other planets in a similar way as it does on Earth, researchers have obtained an estimate for the number of intelligent communicating civilizations within our own galaxy -the Milky Way. They calculate that there could be over 30 active communicating intelligent civilizations in our home Galaxy.

Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Nottingham, Christopher Conselice who led the research, explains: "There should be at least a few dozen active civilizations in our Galaxy under the assumption that it takes 5 billion years for intelligent life to form on other planets, as on Earth." Conselice also explains that, "The idea is looking at evolution, but on a cosmic scale. We call this calculation the Astrobiological Copernican Limit."

First author Tom Westby explains: "The classic method for estimating the number of intelligent civilizations relies on making guesses of values relating to life, whereby opinions about such matters vary quite substantially. Our new study simplifies these assumptions using new data, giving us a solid estimate of the number of civilizations in our Galaxy.

The two Astrobiological Copernican limits are that intelligent life forms in less than 5 billion years, or after about 5 billion years - similar to on Earth where a communicating civilization formed after 4.5 billion years. In the strong criteria, whereby a metal content equal to that of the Sun is needed (the Sun is relatively speaking quite metal rich), we calculate that there should be around 36 active civilizations in our Galaxy."

The research shows that the number of civilizations depends strongly on how long they are actively sending out signals of their existence into space, such as radio transmissions from satellites, television, etc. If other technological civilizations last as long as ours which is currently 100 years old, then there will be about 36 ongoing intelligent technical civilizations throughout our Galaxy.

However, the average distance to these civilizations would be 17,000 light-years away, making detection and communication very difficult with our present technology. It is also possible that we are the only civilization within our Galaxy unless the survival times of civilizations like our own are long.

Professor Conselice continues: "Our new research suggests that searches for extraterrestrial intelligent civilizations not only reveals the existence of how life forms, but also gives us clues for how long our own civilization will last. If we find that intelligent life is common then this would reveal that our civilization could exist for much longer than a few hundred years, alternatively if we find that there are no active civilizations in our Galaxy it is a bad sign for our own long-term existence. By searching for extraterrestrial intelligent life -- even if we find nothing -- we are discovering our own future and fate."

Durham, NC - Results of a study released today in STEM CELLS Translational Medicine (SCTM) may point the way to a cure for a serious lung disease called silicosis that affects millions of workers worldwide. Silicosis results from years of breathing in dust microparticles of silica by workers in professions such as construction and sand blasting. The particles can eventually lead to inflammation and scarring of the lung tissue, which in turn makes it difficult to breathe and can result in death.

There currently is no cure for silicosis and once the damage is done it cannot be reversed. Treatment is focused on relieving symptoms and slowing down the progression of the disease, while the medical world searches for a permanent solution.

Among the more promising potential therapies are mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which can be programmed to become a variety of cell types depending on the conditions of the culture in which they are grown. Researchers have deliberated whether MSCs might be able to regenerate new lung cells to replace those damaged by the silica and, thus, provide a much-needed cure.

In the case of silicosis, however, MSCs have been more appreciated for their anti-inflammatory action. By minimizing lung inflammation caused by silica particles, MSC therapy potentially attenuates scarring and loss of pulmonary function. But when it comes to their efficacy in clinical trials, the results have been only modest at best.

"The reasons for this remain unclear, but one theory is that although MSCs are initially trapped in the narrow pulmonary capillaries after administration, they are cleared from the lungs within approximately 24 hours. This early clearance may explain why the MSCs' effects are often short-lasting or not sufficient to promote improvement in the damaged lung," said Patricia Rocco, M.D., Ph.D. She and Fernanda F. Cruz, M.D., Ph.D., both from the Laboratory of Pulmonary Investigation at Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were senior authors on the paper published in SCTM.

Finding a way to retain the MSCs in the lungs long enough to realize a benefit was the aim of their investigation. In particular, the researchers wanted to learn whether magnetic targeting -- a technique already shown to improve homing and retention of stem cells in other types of target tissues -- might improve outcomes in MSC-treated silicotic mice.

They began by magnetizing MSCs (collected from mice) with superparamagnetic nanoparticles, consisting of an iron oxide (maghemite) core, coated by citrate anions. "Such nanoparticles have already been explored in targeted drug therapy and have as main advantages low toxicity to recipient cells and ease of magnetization; i.e., MSCs uptake such particles spontaneously after a 24-hour incubation period," said Luisa Silva, Ph.D., first author on the paper.

Next, the 24 mice in the study were initially divided into a control group of six and another group of 18 in which silicosis was induced. Fifteen days later, the silicotic mice were further randomized into three equal groups. One of these groups received an intravenous administration of saline; one group was treated with magnetized MSCs; and a third group was treated with magnetized MSCs, plus each animal had a pair of magnets attached to its chest (via tape) immediately after the MSC injection. The magnets were left in place for 48 hours.

"Upon removal of the magnets, we examined all the animals in all the groups and found that those implanted with magnets had a significantly larger amount of magnetized MSCs in their lungs," Dr. Cruz said.

In the second step of the study, the team analyzed the effects of magnetic targeting compared to treatment with non-magnetized MSCs. Seven days after the magnets were removed, the animals were assessed. Those treated with magnetized MSCs plus magnets showed significant reductions in static lung elastance, in resistive pressure and in granuloma area -- all signs of lung improvement -- while the mice in the other groups did not.

"This tells us that magnetic targeting may be a promising strategy for enhancing the beneficial effects of MSC-based cell therapies for silicosis and other chronic lung diseases," Dr. Rocco said.

"Occupational disease caused by breathing microscopic dust particles can cause irreversible lung damage," said Anthony Atala, MD, Editor-in-Chief of STEM CELLS Translational Medicine and director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. "The use of magnetic targeting allowed stem cells to be retained longer in the area of injury and resulted in faster recovery and decreased scar formation, highlighting the potential of this promising strategy for therapy."

COLUMBUS, Ohio - Political candidates' use of humor on social media could sometimes backfire on them with potential supporters, new research suggests.

People were more likely to view messages using humor as inappropriate for a political candidate they didn't know, the study found. That led participants to rate a candidate using humor as less credible than one who didn't - and less likely to get their vote.

"Candidates should be cautious about using humor on social media," said Olivia Bullock, co-author of the study and a doctoral student in communication at The Ohio State University.

"People have expectations that politicians will show seriousness and competence even on social media, where users are often encouraged to be more informal."

The study was published online recently in the journal Communication Research Reports.

In this study, people reacted to posts from a fictitious candidate, so there was no prior knowledge of the candidate.

It is possible that the rules may be different for politicians - like Donald Trump or Elizabeth Warren - who are already known, said study co-author Austin Hubner, also a doctoral student in communication at Ohio State.

"For candidates who aren't well-known, using humor may be more of a risk than for established politicians," Hubner said.

The study involved 476 college students who viewed a profile of a fictious political candidate on the social media site Twitter. The candidate's name was Alex Smith. Participants were randomly assigned to see an Alex Smith who was either male or female and either young or old, as depicted by their photos.

No political party was given for the candidate.

The Twitter profiles contained five tweets pertaining to infrastructure, education, voting and campaign donations.

Half of the participants saw straightforward tweets on the issue, while the other half saw tweets that used a humorous device - puns - to send the same message.

For example, one tweet using a pun was "We're sick of getting bad health care! It's time to heal our broken system." The equivalent formal tweet was "We're tired of getting bad health care! It's time to fix our broken system."

Results showed that participants who read the tweets using humor were more likely than those who read the standard tweets to say the messages were not appropriate for an individual running for public office and that they were surprised that the candidate sent them.

As a result, candidates who used humor in their tweets were deemed less credible and participants were then less likely to say they would vote and campaign for and donate to them if they were running in their district.

The sex or age of the candidate did not affect how participants in the study judged the use of humor.

Bullock noted that the participants in the study were all college students, and results may be different in other demographic groups.

"On the other hand, if any group is going to respond positively to humor on social media, the expectation would be that it would be young people," Bullock said. "That's not what we found."

One question not addressed specifically by the study is the role of partisanship in how humor is accepted, because the candidates in the study did not have party labels.

But the researchers did ask participants what party they identified with, and what party they thought the candidates in the study belonged to. Most participants thought the candidates in the study were Democrats.

But participants who identified as Democrats were not more likely than those identifying as Independents or Republicans to have a positive reaction to the use of humor by the candidates, Bullock said.

"That provides some indication that people may not be more accepting of humor from a candidate from their own party," she said.

Overall, the findings suggest that candidates should be mindful of their audience on social media, particularly when they're first starting out, Bullock said.

"People have certain expectations of political candidates and they need to keep those in mind when they are communicating."

In the fight against cancer or chronic infections, the immune system must be active over long periods of time. However, in the long run, the immune defence system often becomes exhausted. Scientists at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) have now found initial evidence in mice that skeletal muscles help to keep the immune system functional in chronic diseases.

In many cases, severe weight loss and a decrease in muscle mass are the result of cancer or dangerous infections. In addition to this process known as cachexia, patients often suffer from a weakened immune system. One of the reasons for this is a loss of function of a group of T-cells, whose task it is to recognize and kill virus-infected cells or cancer cells.

The processes leading to loss of T-cell activity are still largely unexplained. However, first indications suggest that there is a connection with cachexia. "It is known that T-cells are involved in the loss of skeletal muscle mass. But whether and how, in turn, skeletal muscles influence the function of the T-cells is still unclear," explains Guoliang Cui from the DKFZ.

To find out, the scientists infected mice with lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus (LCMV). This method is a widely used model system to study the course of acute or chronic infections in mice. The researchers then analysed the gene expression in the skeletal muscles of the animals and found that in chronic infections, the muscle cells release an increased amount of the messenger substance interleukin-15. This cytokine causes T-cell precursors to settle in the skeletal muscles. As a result, they are spatially delimited and protected from contact with the chronic inflammation.

"If the T-cells, which actively fight the infection, lose their full functionality through continuous stimulation, the precursor cells can migrate from the muscles and develop into functional T-cells," said Jingxia Wu, lead author of the study. "This enables the immune system to fight the virus continuously over a long period."

So could regular training strengthen the immune system? "In our study, mice with more muscle mass were better able to cope with chronic viral infection than those whose muscles were weaker. But whether the results can be transferred to humans, future experiments will have to show," explains Guoliang Cui.

In a sign that designer drugs are becoming more prevalent in Australia, synthetic cathinones - commonly known as 'bath salts' - have been detected in the nation's wastewater in the largest study of its kind in the country.

These emerging family of drugs mimic the effects of ecstasy and amphetamines are among 15 new psychoactive substances (NPS) found in a study of Australia's metropolitan and regional wastewaters over the past three years.

Led by the University of South Australia, the study revealed a range of new stimulants gaining popularity, with N-ethylpentylone and ethylone among the most prevalent.

UniSA analytical chemist Dr Richard Bade says drug seizure data and surveys show that synthetic cannabinoids are actually the most widely used NPS in Australia but are notoriously difficult to detect in wastewater, while cathinones are more easily traceable.

New psychoactive substances are increasingly found at music festivals, with users attracted to the 'novel effects' or experiences that these drugs provide.

"There is little information relating to potential side effects, but they can include paranoia, hallucinations and panic attacks and we know they have caused some deaths at music festivals, with people mistaking them for ecstasy," Dr Bade says.

Samples covering all states and territories were collected bi-monthly from October 2017-June 2018 and October 2019-February 2020.

The study demonstrated the 'wax and wane' cycles of many designer drugs, such as N-ethylpentylone, which was initially seen widely in South Australia, Victoria and the ACT but by 2019 was only found in Tasmania's wastewater.

"On the other hand, eutylone was not found in the first sampling period but was the most prevalent NPS in all states and territories in late 2019 and early 2020, except South Australia," Dr Bade says.

The legality of these drugs is complex in Australia, with different laws applying to NPS across the country. In South Australia, Queensland, NSW and Victoria, there is now a blanket ban on possessing or selling any substance that has a psychoactive effect other than alcohol, tobacco and food.

In other states and territories, specific NPS substances are banned and new ones are regularly added to the list. This means that a drug that was legal to sell or possess today, may be illegal tomorrow.

"Little is known about safe doses of NPS," Dr Bade says. "There are numerous reports that they have caused fatalities, but pharmacokinetic studies have not been done on these substances, so no-one knows for sure, which adds to the concern surrounding them."

This is the most comprehensive wastewater study of NPS ever undertaken in Australia, with up to 53 locations sampled every two months between October 2017 and February 2020, covering more than half of the population.

Tokyo, Japan - Type 1 diabetes mellitus (T1DM) results from an irreversible autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing pancreatic β-cells requiring life-long substitution of insulin. In a new study, researchers at the Institute of Industrial Science, The University of Tokyo discovered that the diameter of cell-laden hydrogels determines its longevity after transplantation, paving the way for efficacious cell therapy for T1DM.

Current treatment strategies for T1DM focus on timed exogenous insulin administration, posing a significant burden on the patient as well as the health care system. Cell therapy aims at replacing lost pancreatic β-cells permanently, eliminating the need for insulin substitution. Although cell replacement therapy has been regarded as an attractive option for T1DM, its clinical success has been limited by immune-mediated foreign body reactions.

"Cell therapy suffers from a similar fate to that of organ transplantation, which is transplant rejection," says corresponding author of the study Shoji Takeuchi. "One way to mitigate this issue is to encapsulate pancreatic cells in hydrogels, although this does not prevent the transplant from foreign body reactions. We wanted to investigate how we can optimize hydrogels to provide long-term immunoprotection for transplanted cells."

The researchers hypothesized that the diameter of hydrogel fibers critically determines whether the cell transplant mitigates foreign body reactions. By implanting barium alginate (Ba-Alg) hydrogels with variable fiber diameters into normal mice, they showed that the threshold, above which immune reactions were significantly lower, appears to be at 1.0 mm. To investigate if the biological superiority comes at a biophysical expense, the researchers compared 1.0-mm- and 0.35-mm-thick Ba-Alg hydrogel fibers. Not only was the 1.0-mm-thick fiber easier to handle than the 0.35-mm-thick construct based on biomechanical measurements, it also allowed small molecules like glucose, insulin and oxygen to pass through the hydrogel membrane, all of which are required if cells encapsulated within the hydrogel are to function properly.

But did it keep its promise to facilitate cell therapy for T1DM? To address this, the researchers loaded rat pancreatic islet cells into 1.0-mm- and 0.35-mm-thick hydrogel fibers and tested how well the fibers performed in secreting insulin upon stimulation with glucose. Although cells in 0.35-mm-thick hydrogels performed better, cells in 1.0-mm-diameter-fibers functioned sufficiently well to test them in diabetic mice in the next step. Here, the researchers transplanted the two types of hydrogels in the intraperitoneal cavities of diabetic mice and measured daily non-fasting blood glucose levels. Strikingly, 1.0-mm-thick fibers normalized blood glucose levels of diabetic mice for a period over four times longer than 0.35-mm-thick fibers, suggesting a higher longevity of pancreatic cells encapsulated in thicker hydrogel fibers. Further, microscopic analysis showed no evidence of foreign body reactions of 1.0-mm-thick fibers, while 0.35-mm-thick fibers seemed to have deteriorated over time.

"These are striking results that show how hydrogel encapsulation in 1.0-mm-thick fibers provides long-term immunoprotection for pancreatic islets while maintaining their function to control blood glucose concentrations in diabetic mice," says Takeuchi. "Our findings provide new insights into cell therapy-based treatment of type 1 diabetes mellitus."

Scientists in Japan and the Netherlands have independently developed anaerobic soil disinfestation, also known as biological soil disinfestation or reductive soil disinfestation to kill off pathogenic bacteria, parasitic nematodes and even weeds in soils without using pesticides. By covering the soil with plastic to cut off access to oxygen, unwanted organisms suffocate and do not need to be chemically fumigated.

A research team led by Kazuki Fujita formerly of Shinshu University and Takashi Kunito currently of Shinshu University focused on the phosphorus dynamics and microbial phosphorus acquisition during anaerobic soil disinfestation in Andosols. Andosol comes from the Japanese word, "an" which means dark, and "do" which means soil. Japan is lucky in that about half of its landmass is covered in this rich, black, productive soil. However, this soil absorbs phosphorus considerably making them unavailable to plants to use as nutrients. The team at Shinshu University were able to demonstrate that phosphorus can become more available in arable Andosols by giving them the anaerobic soil disinfestation treatment.

The group evaluated the availability of phosphorus using biological indicators. They first applied the resource allocation model for enzyme synthesis. This was because there were conflicting indicators from the initial chemical extractant tests. One interesting finding from the study was that a less diverse bacterial group might produce more alkaline phosphomonoesterase in soils by alkaline phosphomonoesterase gene harbored by microbial communities, or phoD.

When a field is filled with water, as are rice paddies in many parts of Asia, it had been known that the phosphorus leaks out and turns into a form easily available to plants. However, when the soil is then dried, it becomes unavailable again. The researchers looked into the mechanism of this process.

The increase in availability of accessible phosphorus may be effected by drying treatments after anaerobic soil disinfection. The researchers hope to continue their studies to learn of other factors that influence phosphorus dynamics. This experiment was conducted in an indoor lab, so the researchers hope to continue their experiment in real world environments, and also look into why the phosphorus did not increase in one of the samples.

PISCATAWAY, NJ - It's not just heavy drinking that's a problem -- even consuming alcohol within weekly low-risk drinking guidelines can result in hospitalization and death, according to a new study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs.

Moderate drinkers "are not insulated from harm," write researchers led by Adam Sherk, Ph.D., of the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

The Canadian government's low-risk drinking guidelines state that women should consume no more than about 10 drinks per week and men no more than 15. (A "drink" is 12 oz. of beer, 5 oz. of wine, or 1.5 oz. of liquor.) These limits are slightly higher than those in the United States and exceed those of most other high-income countries.

In their research, Sherk and colleagues found that, in British Columbia, a significant portion of alcohol-caused death and disability was experienced by those drinking within these guidelines. For example, more than 50 percent of cancer deaths resulting from alcohol use occurred in people drinking moderately. Further, 38 percent of all alcohol-attributable deaths were experienced by people drinking below the weekly limits or among former drinkers.

However, for women, alcohol consumption within the guidelines did offer some protection from death from heart attack, stroke and diabetes. Nonetheless, "[t]his protective effect did not appear to hold for men," the authors write, "who experienced harm at all drinking levels."

For their study, the investigators used a new, open-access model -- the International Model of Alcohol Harms and Policies (InterMAHP) -- which can be used to estimate alcohol harms in a country or state, in total or by drinking group. They used British Columbia-specific alcohol exposure data from substance use surveys, hospital data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information and mortality data from Statistics Canada's Vital Statistics. These sources were nonidentifying and for 2014.

Because of these results, Sherk and colleagues say that some national drinking guidelines, which are published by many countries to help drinkers make informed health decisions, may be too high. This may be particularly true in Canada, where the research was conducted.

Sherk suggests that guideline limits should be lowered to match those in the Netherlands: "Don't drink or, if you do, drink no more than one drink per day."

Overall, he says, the best advice for drinking is to err on the side of caution, "When it comes to alcohol use, less is better."